When being a knitting designer has nothing to do with knitting

Sometimes I wish that designing knitting patterns took more knitting and less, well, everything else.

You see that chart up there? I'm irrationally proud of it because I've spent the last three days working on it. Making this chart involved teaching myself a new software program (Inkscape, which if you're not familiar, is a freeware version of vector programs like Illustrator) and then staring at my monitor while copying each little square, referring back to my hand-drawn chart and the actual knitted mitten the whole time.

Because I know that most people will be printing out the charts in my patterns so that they can carry them around (who wants to knit while staring at a computer monitor? Not many people), I particularly care about how the chart looks printed out, which addes even more steps to the process. This printout you see above is the 4th so far, and I'm not done yet.

But I am at the point where I get to follow my instructions to knit the second mitt. And that's freakin' exciting, because it means I'm going to knit for the next few hours instead of dragging squares across the screen!

I'm just about to cast on for the mate to this mitten:

Which you might notice isn't the one I started out with, the pink one I've shown here and on Ravelry before . . . well I managed to lose the pink ball of yarn somewhere in this messy apartment, so I had to knit another set! The pattern photos will show both the pink single mitt and the pair of green mittens.

That, and individual charts for each size. I'm writing the pattern in three sizes, and decided to do separate charts for each size due to the way the thumbs are shaped (and also because I hate reading charts that say "start here for size small" or whatever, it's so confusing!). What's great about doing separate charts is that the knitter can just print out the one she needs and not waste ink printing stuff she isn't going to use! I'm pretty psyched about that.

But honestly, right now, I'm really hoping that the second and third charts will take way less time than the first one is taking . . .